


That Damned Beautiful Problem

by Catchclaw



Series: Mental Mimosa [142]
Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Angsty Schmoop, Drunk Dialing, Feelings Realization, Ghosts, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-15
Updated: 2018-09-15
Packaged: 2019-07-12 20:21:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,332
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16002590
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Catchclaw/pseuds/Catchclaw
Summary: Turns out ghosts are real--and so are Kirk's feelings for Spock.





	That Damned Beautiful Problem

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: Ghostbusters AU. Prompt from this [generator](http://colormayfade.tumblr.com/generator).
> 
> So I didn't go for the AU, but yes, the lads do battle ghosts.

“Let me get this straight: there are _ghosts_?”

Spock’s expression was pained. “I’m afraid so, Captain.”

“Ghosts as in, spirits of the dead?”

“I believe that is the traditional definition.”

Kirk scratched his head, tried to swallow his bewildered. “Well, hell. That was the last thing I was expecting.”

“The probability of such an occurrence is exceptionally low.”

“Exceptionally--? Spock, you can’t tell me ghosts factored into your calculations. They aren’t real! I mean, I thought they weren’t. Are you telling me that you…?”

Spock bristled. “I am telling you, sir, that I do my best to consider all possibilities. Even those I consider highly unlikely.”

“Like ghosts being real.”

“Yes.”

Kirk opened his mouth to argue, got his finger all set to point, but McCoy came skidding around the corner like a man on fire, his eyes as wide as they were wild.

“Goddamn son of a bitch!” McCoy panted, canting a hand against the bulkhead. “I know it sounds nutty, Jim, but I swear I just ran headfirst into a ghost!”

“Why, doctor,” Kirk drawled. “You don’t say?”

*****

They were on Starbase 74, ostensibly, to investigate radio silence, an unexpected loss of power, and general lack of _hi there_ ’s from the place in three solar months. Somebody should’ve hoofed it out sooner, that much was clear to Kirk now, but given the base’s lack of strategic location and her skipper’s reputation for pique, nobody in the Fleet had taken it seriously until the _Shenji_ had shown up for her regular supply run and not in actual fact come all the way back.

The ship had, all right, but her crew? Either missing, catatonic, or so terrified they couldn’t speak.

So Kirk had gotten the call from a gaggle of nervous-looking Admirals; less nervous, of course, about what was actually happening than what the galactic press might write about it when and if the word, as it were, got out. So the _Enterprise_ was in a race against time (and headlines) and gods only knew what was going to happen at HQ when Kirk’s report landed--assuming that he’d have a chance to write it. Running pell mell for his life from a horde of angry alien ghosts wasn’t making that seem very likely. But optimism--or at least stubborn faith in his crew’s resilience and ingenuity--was always the order of the day. Even if said crew he’d beamed down with was looking less resilient and more and more freaked the fuck out.

“Explain this to me again,” McCoy hissed as they cowered in the weapons control room, waiting for Spock to decide it was safe for them to make a break for the main shuttle bay. “Ghosts are _real_?”

Kirk sighed. “And they’re trying to eat-slash-occupy-slash-possess us, yes.”

McCoy sat back on his heels. “Oh my good and merciful gods. What in the ever loving fuck.”

There was a shriek outside, a thunderous wail, and the bulkhead shook something awful, as if a pair of giant, invisible hands were trying to shove their way through it, and they recoiled, tucked themselves tighter against the far wall. Kirk aimed his phaser at the door, knowing it was fruitless, kicking himself yet again for not beaming down with a full security team like Spock had advised. There was just something hinky about the scans, something not quite right about the whole situation, that’d made him reluctant to spare anybody he didn’t have to.

There’d been volunteers, of course there had; that was his crew. But in the end, he hadn’t been ready to risk the whole ship; he’d ordered Sulu to take her as far out of range as he could and still catch their comm signal.

Now, though, their communicators were useless, scrambled by the base’s weird energy; they couldn’t call for backup--or for pick up--even if they wanted to.

They were, in a word, screwed.

Unless Spock could get one of the base’s ancient shuttlecrafts going.

Unless he and Bones could manage to not get fucking devoured by creepy shit from the way back beyond.

God, he needed a vacation. A nice long shore leave somewhere. Somewhere private, where he could walk around without fear of being recognized, where he could drink too much if he wanted and screw beings he liked without worrying about whether they’d stop in the middle of the act and squint up at him in the warm dark and say, _Hey, aren’t you that Starfleet guy_? _The captain? The one who saved the--who stopped the--? Yeah, you are! It’s you._

He hated having to lie, to disappoint them, to tell them _no I’m not but I get that all the time and can I finish getting you off, please?_

Sometimes they didn’t believe him; sometimes, they were sure. And sometimes, it didn’t matter what he said because they were gonna tell their friends they’d fucked James Kirk whether he copped to his actual, non-vacation identity or not and why he was worrying about this in the midst of a life-or-death standoff with spirits, he had no fucking idea.

Ok, no. Yes, he did.

It was the life and death thing. It’d been weighing on him lately. Less a sense of mortality (god) or old age (not yet), and more a feeling of impermanence. The five-year mission was zipping by, one month falling after the next, and that was part of it, probably. Then there was the feeling of loneliness that was waking him up at night, sometimes; this hole, this crawl, deep in his gut. It’d started when Sam had gotten married the previous year and asked Jim to be his best man, to haul ass back to Earth and stand by his side. Seeing Aurelian come down the aisle, seeing the look on Sam’s face, it’d shaken something inside him, like an apple tree caught in a storm, and shit he hadn’t thought about in years, feelings he’d stuffed under his bunk the first year at the Academy, had all come flooding back.

Yeah, his career was important, all the good he could do; being a captain was the thing he was best at, the thing that made him feel like he mattered. But there was the small problem, small, of being lonely, of being acutely aware that he was out here doing all this on his own--or at the very least, with no one to come back to, no one to fall into bed with at the end of the day.

Dancing with Aurelian, with her friends, he’d thought: a relationship right now would be selfish. To let somebody love him, to let himself love them, and then to throw himself into the arms of the universe, the whole great unknown, seemed like a lot to ask of anybody.

His job was dangerous, _space_ was dangerous, and the whole James Kirk name only went so far; it’d be cold comfort to love somebody famous when they up and went and themselves dead.

He’d gotten maudlin drunk, after, and crawled back to his hotel room sad and utterly smashed. He’d taken a shower and lost his shirt and rung up Spock out on New Vulcan, and made zero attempt not to be a damned mess.

“Jim,” Spock had said once he’d spilled the whole story, lost himself in year’s worth of snot and ugly tears, “affection and professional success need not be separate. Your mother met your father onboard ship, did she not?”

Kirk had waved his hand at the eyecam, too worn out to bother sitting up. “Meeting somebody isn’t the problem, Spock. _Fuck_. I meet lots of people.”

“I am sure that you do. But you have not, it would seem, yet met the right one. Or ones. Love, as you know, can be a transitory emotion, and one that is often not permanently fixed in its--”

“Stop, stop. Fuck, stop. I don’t need to hear that right now.”

Spock had pursed his lips in a way that meant that he was fighting a smile. “What do you need, then?”

“Why are you humoring me?” Kirk groaned. “Aren’t you supposed to be out planting Vulcan green beans or something?”

“Believe it or not, there are others here capable of tending to the gardens without me.” Spock tilted his head. “But there are none, I suspect, as adept as I at listening to you.”

Kirk sniffed. “You’re not listening. You’re consoling.”

"However you would choose to characterize it.”

“I hate this. I hate feeling like this.”

“Perhaps if you had imbibed less, the feeling would be somewhat less acute.”

“No, if I’d imbibed less, I’d be hurting worse.”

Spock made a small, sad sound. “Jim.”

Kirk knocked the cam away for a moment and scrubbed at his eyes. “Spock, would you do something for me?”

“What is that?”

“Talk to me. Tell me what it’s like there. How it feels to hang out with an old and gray version of yourself.”

There was a pause, long enough so Kirk had caught the play of the wind beyond Spock’s shoulders, a gentle rush that made the long lines of the sand behind him dance.

“There are two full-grown settlements now,” Spock said at last, his voice slower now, low and deep. “A thousand Vulcans have made this planet their home. Jim, you should see it.”

“I will,” Kirk had said, “if you tell me about it.”

He’d fallen asleep with Spock’s voice in his ear, with images of a far-away world at work behind his eyes.

When they’d met again, on the _Enterprise_ , Spock hadn’t mentioned it, his captain’s late-night drunken call, and that more than his hazy memory had made Kirk feel foolish about the whole thing, embarrassed, had convinced him that he’d stepped over some kind of unprofessional line that colleagues--even friendly ones?--should not cross.

Spock hadn’t brought it up and so Kirk hadn’t, either. Had made a point of not wondering what in the worlds made him think of Spock, of comming Spock, when he was smashed out of his mind and so terribly fucking sad.

When he was thinking about the damned beautiful problem of love.

They’d known each other for years--four, now. Or was it five?--and there’d been times when he’d considered it, in his baser moments: how Spock would taste, how his body would feel stretched out over Kirk’s, what his smile would look like when he was too busy to hold himself back. For a long time, though, Spock had been with Uhura, and Kirk had set those thoughts aside, bottled them up in the shadows of his selfish head tight. But then they weren’t together, then she’d found Christine, and Kirk had felt a lot less guilty about what flashed behind his lids in the last moment or so before he came.

But he’d never said anything, never let himself ponder it in the light of the actual day.

Kirk was Kirk and Spock was Spock and they had jobs to do, damn it. Planets to save and galaxies to explore and admirals to appease. They didn’t have time for....whatever else they could be.

Besides, Spock hadn’t said anything, either, had never given Kirk a hint that the door was even open, and so, ipso facto: case closed.

Why was he was worrying about it now, again?

There was a roar from the corridor, a hair-raising, icy-heart clench, and beside him, McCoy let out a moan.

Oh, yeah, Kirk thought, that’s why. Life and death.

Kirk’s communicator beeped, kicked him out of his reverie, and for a moment, his heart leaped: _Enterprise_? But no, it was strictly binary code only: two short, one long, then repeating--the basic signal he and Spock had agreed upon, had sincerely hoped the communicators were still capable of. And they were.

Kirk took a deep breath and reached for McCoy’s arm.

“In sixty seconds,” he said, pitching his voice over the din, “we’re making a run for that door.”

“What?!” McCoy spat. “The one with the ghosts behind it? No, we’re not!”

“We are. We’re going through that door and we’re turning right and running like hell. You think you can do that?”

McCoy got to his feet as Kirk yanked and glared at him, pale face and all. “Something tells me I don’t get a choice.”

“Right,” Kirk said, counting off the last seconds in his head and dropping into a stance. Picturing the first few steps, the turn, the look on Spock's face when they made the shuttle, when Kirk shouted  _Go now!_ “If we're getting out of here in one piece, you don’t.”

*****

It was a solar week before the news hit the lines, before the public comm channels exploded with a flurry of news: Starbase 74 destroyed, critical reactor failure, and yeah, ok: space ghosts. But nobody bought the ghost part.

“Beings are often more reluctant to believe the truth than the stories they tell themselves,” Spock had intoned at dinner, a gentle response to McCoy’s incredulous rage.

“Yeah, sure,” McCoy said, “but come on! Starfleet talking about spirits? Why the hell would they lie about that? Why would any civvie assume that they’re making up that kind of shit?”

Kirk clapped Bones on the shoulder and snatched his last handful of fries. “You ever think maybe beings are more reasonable than you think? That it’s hard for them to get their heads around something as out there as oh, you know, ghosts?”

McCoy rolled his eyes and sighed. “So sue me. I’m a fan of the truth, no matter how weird.”

And it was a solar week, too, before Kirk stopped chasing ghosts in his own head and headed down the corridor after dinner, tapped the chime on Spock’s door.

“Hey,” he said when it opened. “There’s--can I talk to you about something?”

Spock--soft in his sleeping robe, his feet bare--stepped aside with an almost smile and beckoned Kirk inside. “Always.”

**Author's Note:**

> It did not escape my notice that I've written two feelings realization fics involving ghosts this week and you know, I'm ok with that. I feel like Dean would approve.


End file.
